Rick Prelinger

Rick Prelinger
Prelinger at the Prelinger Library in 2009
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Archivist, professor
Known forPrelinger Archives, Prelinger Library
Websitewww.panix.com/~footage/

Rick Prelinger is an American archivist, writer, and filmmaker.[1][2][3][4] A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz,[5] Prelinger is best known as the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation.[6][7]

Rick has partnered with the Internet Archive to make over 6,000 films from Prelinger Archives available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. With the Voyager Company, a pioneer new media publisher, he produced fourteen LaserDiscs and CD-ROMs with material from his archives, including Ephemeral Films,[8] the Our Secret Century[9] series and Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc on the history of suburbia and suburban planning (co-produced with architect Keller Easterling).[10] For Prelinger, "archives are a primary weapon against amnesia."[11]

  1. ^ Panorama Ephemera published in the Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, Volume 2 Issue 1 (Ephemera)
  2. ^ Prelinger's "Reimagining the Archive" presentation at UCLA, November 2010
  3. ^ Interview/podcast on the future of archives and issues relating to access to archives and culture (2011)
  4. ^ Interview with Spots Unknown
  5. ^ "Rick Prelinger - Film+Digital Media BA, PhD / MFA in Social Documentary Production at UC Santa Cruz". University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  6. ^ Lost Landscapes and Found Collections, Rick Prelinger at MACBA in Barcelona
  7. ^ EPHEMERA: The Prelinger Archives (March 2013 Edition) on Vimeo
  8. ^ "Rick Prelinger's Ephemeral Films (Richard Gehr)". Levity.com. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  9. ^ "Mediamatic Review: G. J Strengholt - Our Secret Century - R. Prelinger". Archived from the original on February 1, 2008. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  10. ^ Easterling, Keller; Prelinger, Richard (February 15, 2013). Call it Home: the house that private enterprise built. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1481920087.
  11. ^ Rick Prelinger, "Dr. Rick Prelinger on Sharing as Activism" video, UCSC Library [1]